Friday, 10 April 2015

Studebaker leads the American Invasion

Great name. Shame about the colour. My guess is that the Studebaker Golden Hawks of the day would have been in a slightly pale shade of blue with the gold flash on the fin gleaming a bit more. This shade of neither one blue nor another didn't quite work but that didn't matter a great deal. If you were a young lad in the toy shop and had to choose between a Morris Cowley and a Studebaker Golden Hawk then the latter probably would have been what you exchanged your pocket money for.

This was the first American car in the catalogues, appearing in February 1958. It would be a good year or so before the Thunderbird followed. Whilst there was also an attractive white version with a gold flash, that was reserved for the mechanical version, 211M, and those being near the end of their appeal by then, few of that version were sold and are decidedly hard to find now.

This normal one, in fact, has been a long time coming and is nearly the last one to complete the numbered list. I'm still missing an early Mercedes 300SL Open Top 303. So far they've all been missing screens or had bad cracks in them. For a long time the Studebakers seemed to be very worn, as if kids had played with them particularly toughly and I almost began to think that there must be a grey version, some having so little paint left!

Corgi were very strict with the colours still and it is almost a relief to have just one colour available for each version, the only difference being the strange silvery-gold plated one.

211

211M

211S gold paint

211S gold plate

It is much to the credit of Corgi's engineers and designers that, when searching through internet images for the car, it is not always immediately obvious whether you're looking at a model or the real thing. Remarkable.